<html><body><h1>A Midsummer Night's Dream</h1><h2>Dramatis Personae</h2>THESEUS, Duke of Athens.<br/>EGEUS, father to Hermia.<br/>LYSANDER<br/>DEMETRIUS<br/>PHILOSTRATE, master of the revels to Theseus.<br/>QUINCE, a carpenter.<br/>SNUG, a joiner.<br/>BOTTOM, a weaver.<br/>FLUTE, a bellows-mender.<br/>SNOUT, a tinker.<br/>STARVELING, a tailor.<br/>HIPPOLYTA, queen of the Amazons, betrothed to Theseus.<br/>HERMIA, daughter to Egeus, in love with Lysander.<br/>HELENA, in love with Demetrius.<br/>OBERON, king of the fairies.<br/>TITANIA, queen of the fairies.<br/>PUCK, or Robin Goodfellow.<br/>PEASEBLOSSOM<br/>COBWEB<br/>MOTH<br/>MUSTARDSEED<br/>Other fairies attending their King and Queen.<br/>Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta.<br/><h2>ACT I</h2><h3>SCENE I.  Athens. The palace of THESEUS.</h3><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour<br/>Draws on apace; four happy days bring in<br/>Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow<br/>This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,<br/>Like to a step-dame or a dowager<br/>Long withering out a young man revenue.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;<br/>Four nights will quickly dream away the time;<br/>And then the moon, like to a silver bow<br/>New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night<br/>Of our solemnities.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Go, Philostrate,<br/>Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;<br/>Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;<br/>Turn melancholy forth to funerals;<br/>The pale companion is not for our pomp.<br/>Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,<br/>And won thy love, doing thee injuries;<br/>But I will wed thee in another key,<br/>With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.<br/><b>EGEUS</b><br/>Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke!<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Thanks, good Egeus: what's the news with thee?<br/><b>EGEUS</b><br/>Full of vexation come I, with complaint<br/>Against my child, my daughter Hermia.<br/>Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,<br/>This man hath my consent to marry her.<br/>Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,<br/>This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child;<br/>Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,<br/>And interchanged love-tokens with my child:<br/>Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,<br/>With feigning voice verses of feigning love,<br/>And stolen the impression of her fantasy<br/>With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,<br/>Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers<br/>Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:<br/>With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,<br/>Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me,<br/>To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,<br/>Be it so she; will not here before your grace<br/>Consent to marry with Demetrius,<br/>I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,<br/>As she is mine, I may dispose of her:<br/>Which shall be either to this gentleman<br/>Or to her death, according to our law<br/>Immediately provided in that case.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid:<br/>To you your father should be as a god;<br/>One that composed your beauties, yea, and one<br/>To whom you are but as a form in wax<br/>By him imprinted and within his power<br/>To leave the figure or disfigure it.<br/>Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>So is Lysander.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>In himself he is;<br/>But in this kind, wanting your father's voice,<br/>The other must be held the worthier.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>I would my father look'd but with my eyes.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>I do entreat your grace to pardon me.<br/>I know not by what power I am made bold,<br/>Nor how it may concern my modesty,<br/>In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;<br/>But I beseech your grace that I may know<br/>The worst that may befall me in this case,<br/>If I refuse to wed Demetrius.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Either to die the death or to abjure<br/>For ever the society of men.<br/>Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;<br/>Know of your youth, examine well your blood,<br/>Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,<br/>You can endure the livery of a nun,<br/>For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,<br/>To live a barren sister all your life,<br/>Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.<br/>Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,<br/>To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;<br/>But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,<br/>Than that which withering on the virgin thorn<br/>Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,<br/>Ere I will my virgin patent up<br/>Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke<br/>My soul consents not to give sovereignty.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Take time to pause; and, by the nest new moon--<br/>The sealing-day betwixt my love and me,<br/>For everlasting bond of fellowship--<br/>Upon that day either prepare to die<br/>For disobedience to your father's will,<br/>Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would;<br/>Or on Diana's altar to protest<br/>For aye austerity and single life.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield<br/>Thy crazed title to my certain right.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>You have her father's love, Demetrius;<br/>Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.<br/><b>EGEUS</b><br/>Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love,<br/>And what is mine my love shall render him.<br/>And she is mine, and all my right of her<br/>I do estate unto Demetrius.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>I am, my lord, as well derived as he,<br/>As well possess'd; my love is more than his;<br/>My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd,<br/>If not with vantage, as Demetrius';<br/>And, which is more than all these boasts can be,<br/>I am beloved of beauteous Hermia:<br/>Why should not I then prosecute my right?<br/>Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,<br/>Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,<br/>And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,<br/>Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,<br/>Upon this spotted and inconstant man.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>I must confess that I have heard so much,<br/>And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;<br/>But, being over-full of self-affairs,<br/>My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;<br/>And come, Egeus; you shall go with me,<br/>I have some private schooling for you both.<br/>For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself<br/>To fit your fancies to your father's will;<br/>Or else the law of Athens yields you up--<br/>Which by no means we may extenuate--<br/>To death, or to a vow of single life.<br/>Come, my Hippolyta: what cheer, my love?<br/>Demetrius and Egeus, go along:<br/>I must employ you in some business<br/>Against our nuptial and confer with you<br/>Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.<br/><b>EGEUS</b><br/>With duty and desire we follow you.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>How now, my love! why is your cheek so pale?<br/>How chance the roses there do fade so fast?<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Belike for want of rain, which I could well<br/>Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,<br/>Could ever hear by tale or history,<br/>The course of true love never did run smooth;<br/>But, either it was different in blood,--<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Or else misgraffed in respect of years,--<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>O spite! too old to be engaged to young.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,--<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>O hell! to choose love by another's eyes.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,<br/>War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,<br/>Making it momentany as a sound,<br/>Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;<br/>Brief as the lightning in the collied night,<br/>That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,<br/>And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'<br/>The jaws of darkness do devour it up:<br/>So quick bright things come to confusion.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>If then true lovers have been ever cross'd,<br/>It stands as an edict in destiny:<br/>Then let us teach our trial patience,<br/>Because it is a customary cross,<br/>As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,<br/>Wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>A good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia.<br/>I have a widow aunt, a dowager<br/>Of great revenue, and she hath no child:<br/>From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;<br/>And she respects me as her only son.<br/>There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;<br/>And to that place the sharp Athenian law<br/>Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,<br/>Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;<br/>And in the wood, a league without the town,<br/>Where I did meet thee once with Helena,<br/>To do observance to a morn of May,<br/>There will I stay for thee.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>My good Lysander!<br/>I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow,<br/>By his best arrow with the golden head,<br/>By the simplicity of Venus' doves,<br/>By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,<br/>And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,<br/>When the false Troyan under sail was seen,<br/>By all the vows that ever men have broke,<br/>In number more than ever women spoke,<br/>In that same place thou hast appointed me,<br/>To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>God speed fair Helena! whither away?<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.<br/>Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!<br/>Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air<br/>More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,<br/>When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.<br/>Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,<br/>Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;<br/>My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,<br/>My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody.<br/>Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,<br/>The rest I'd give to be to you translated.<br/>O, teach me how you look, and with what art<br/>You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>I give him curses, yet he gives me love.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O that my prayers could such affection move!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>The more I hate, the more he follows me.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>The more I love, the more he hateth me.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;<br/>Lysander and myself will fly this place.<br/>Before the time I did Lysander see,<br/>Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me:<br/>O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,<br/>That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:<br/>To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold<br/>Her silver visage in the watery glass,<br/>Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,<br/>A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,<br/>Through Athens' gates have we devised to steal.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>And in the wood, where often you and I<br/>Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie,<br/>Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,<br/>There my Lysander and myself shall meet;<br/>And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,<br/>To seek new friends and stranger companies.<br/>Farewell, sweet playfellow: pray thou for us;<br/>And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!<br/>Keep word, Lysander: we must starve our sight<br/>From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>I will, my Hermia.<br/>Helena, adieu:<br/>As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>How happy some o'er other some can be!<br/>Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.<br/>But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;<br/>He will not know what all but he do know:<br/>And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,<br/>So I, admiring of his qualities:<br/>Things base and vile, folding no quantity,<br/>Love can transpose to form and dignity:<br/>Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;<br/>And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:<br/>Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;<br/>Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:<br/>And therefore is Love said to be a child,<br/>Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.<br/>As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,<br/>So the boy Love is perjured every where:<br/>For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,<br/>He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;<br/>And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,<br/>So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.<br/>I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:<br/>Then to the wood will he to-morrow night<br/>Pursue her; and for this intelligence<br/>If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:<br/>But herein mean I to enrich my pain,<br/>To have his sight thither and back again.<br/><h3>SCENE II.  Athens. QUINCE'S house.</h3><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Is all our company here?<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>You were best to call them generally, man by man,<br/>according to the scrip.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is<br/>thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our<br/>interlude before the duke and the duchess, on his<br/>wedding-day at night.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats<br/>on, then read the names of the actors, and so grow<br/>to a point.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Marry, our play is, The most lamentable comedy, and<br/>most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a<br/>merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your<br/>actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>That will ask some tears in the true performing of<br/>it: if I do it, let the audience look to their<br/>eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some<br/>measure. To the rest: yet my chief humour is for a<br/>tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to<br/>tear a cat in, to make all split.<br/>The raging rocks<br/>And shivering shocks<br/>Shall break the locks<br/>Of prison gates;<br/>And Phibbus' car<br/>Shall shine from far<br/>And make and mar<br/>The foolish Fates.<br/>This was lofty! Now name the rest of the players.<br/>This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover is<br/>more condoling.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>Here, Peter Quince.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Flute, you must take Thisby on you.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>What is Thisby? a wandering knight?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>It is the lady that Pyramus must love.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>That's all one: you shall play it in a mask, and<br/>you may speak as small as you will.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too, I'll<br/>speak in a monstrous little voice. 'Thisne,<br/>Thisne;' 'Ah, Pyramus, lover dear! thy Thisby dear,<br/>and lady dear!'<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>No, no; you must play Pyramus: and, Flute, you Thisby.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Well, proceed.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Robin Starveling, the tailor.<br/><b>STARVELING</b><br/>Here, Peter Quince.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother.<br/>Tom Snout, the tinker.<br/><b>SNOUT</b><br/>Here, Peter Quince.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>You, Pyramus' father: myself, Thisby's father:<br/>Snug, the joiner; you, the lion's part: and, I<br/>hope, here is a play fitted.<br/><b>SNUG</b><br/>Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it<br/>be, give it me, for I am slow of study.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will<br/>do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar,<br/>that I will make the duke say 'Let him roar again,<br/>let him roar again.'<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>An you should do it too terribly, you would fright<br/>the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek;<br/>and that were enough to hang us all.<br/><b>ALL</b><br/>That would hang us, every mother's son.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the<br/>ladies out of their wits, they would have no more<br/>discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my<br/>voice so that I will roar you as gently as any<br/>sucking dove; I will roar you an 'twere any<br/>nightingale.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a<br/>sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a<br/>summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man:<br/>therefore you must needs play Pyramus.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best<br/>to play it in?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Why, what you will.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I will discharge it in either your straw-colour<br/>beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain<br/>beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your<br/>perfect yellow.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and<br/>then you will play bare-faced. But, masters, here<br/>are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request<br/>you and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night;<br/>and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the<br/>town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if<br/>we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with<br/>company, and our devices known. In the meantime I<br/>will draw a bill of properties, such as our play<br/>wants. I pray you, fail me not.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>We will meet; and there we may rehearse most<br/>obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect: adieu.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>At the duke's oak we meet.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Enough; hold or cut bow-strings.<br/><h2>ACT II</h2><h3>SCENE I.  A wood near Athens.</h3><b>PUCK</b><br/>How now, spirit! whither wander you?<br/><b>Fairy</b><br/>Over hill, over dale,<br/>Thorough bush, thorough brier,<br/>Over park, over pale,<br/>Thorough flood, thorough fire,<br/>I do wander everywhere,<br/>Swifter than the moon's sphere;<br/>And I serve the fairy queen,<br/>To dew her orbs upon the green.<br/>The cowslips tall her pensioners be:<br/>In their gold coats spots you see;<br/>Those be rubies, fairy favours,<br/>In those freckles live their savours:<br/>I must go seek some dewdrops here<br/>And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.<br/>Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone:<br/>Our queen and all our elves come here anon.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>The king doth keep his revels here to-night:<br/>Take heed the queen come not within his sight;<br/>For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,<br/>Because that she as her attendant hath<br/>A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;<br/>She never had so sweet a changeling;<br/>And jealous Oberon would have the child<br/>Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;<br/>But she perforce withholds the loved boy,<br/>Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:<br/>And now they never meet in grove or green,<br/>By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,<br/>But, they do square, that all their elves for fear<br/>Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.<br/><b>Fairy</b><br/>Either I mistake your shape and making quite,<br/>Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite<br/>Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he<br/>That frights the maidens of the villagery;<br/>Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern<br/>And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;<br/>And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;<br/>Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?<br/>Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,<br/>You do their work, and they shall have good luck:<br/>Are not you he?<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Thou speak'st aright;<br/>I am that merry wanderer of the night.<br/>I jest to Oberon and make him smile<br/>When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,<br/>Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:<br/>And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,<br/>In very likeness of a roasted crab,<br/>And when she drinks, against her lips I bob<br/>And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.<br/>The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,<br/>Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;<br/>Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,<br/>And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;<br/>And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,<br/>And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear<br/>A merrier hour was never wasted there.<br/>But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.<br/><b>Fairy</b><br/>And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:<br/>I have forsworn his bed and company.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Then I must be thy lady: but I know<br/>When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,<br/>And in the shape of Corin sat all day,<br/>Playing on pipes of corn and versing love<br/>To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,<br/>Come from the farthest Steppe of India?<br/>But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,<br/>Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love,<br/>To Theseus must be wedded, and you come<br/>To give their bed joy and prosperity.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,<br/>Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,<br/>Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?<br/>Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night<br/>From Perigenia, whom he ravished?<br/>And make him with fair AEgle break his faith,<br/>With Ariadne and Antiopa?<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>These are the forgeries of jealousy:<br/>And never, since the middle summer's spring,<br/>Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,<br/>By paved fountain or by rushy brook,<br/>Or in the beached margent of the sea,<br/>To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,<br/>But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.<br/>Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,<br/>As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea<br/>Contagious fogs; which falling in the land<br/>Have every pelting river made so proud<br/>That they have overborne their continents:<br/>The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,<br/>The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn<br/>Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;<br/>The fold stands empty in the drowned field,<br/>And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;<br/>The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,<br/>And the quaint mazes in the wanton green<br/>For lack of tread are undistinguishable:<br/>The human mortals want their winter here;<br/>No night is now with hymn or carol blest:<br/>Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,<br/>Pale in her anger, washes all the air,<br/>That rheumatic diseases do abound:<br/>And thorough this distemperature we see<br/>The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts<br/>Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,<br/>And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown<br/>An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds<br/>Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,<br/>The childing autumn, angry winter, change<br/>Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,<br/>By their increase, now knows not which is which:<br/>And this same progeny of evils comes<br/>From our debate, from our dissension;<br/>We are their parents and original.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Do you amend it then; it lies in you:<br/>Why should Titania cross her Oberon?<br/>I do but beg a little changeling boy,<br/>To be my henchman.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Set your heart at rest:<br/>The fairy land buys not the child of me.<br/>His mother was a votaress of my order:<br/>And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,<br/>Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,<br/>And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,<br/>Marking the embarked traders on the flood,<br/>When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive<br/>And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;<br/>Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait<br/>Following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,--<br/>Would imitate, and sail upon the land,<br/>To fetch me trifles, and return again,<br/>As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.<br/>But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;<br/>And for her sake do I rear up her boy,<br/>And for her sake I will not part with him.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>How long within this wood intend you stay?<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Perchance till after Theseus' wedding-day.<br/>If you will patiently dance in our round<br/>And see our moonlight revels, go with us;<br/>If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away!<br/>We shall chide downright, if I longer stay.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove<br/>Till I torment thee for this injury.<br/>My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest<br/>Since once I sat upon a promontory,<br/>And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back<br/>Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath<br/>That the rude sea grew civil at her song<br/>And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,<br/>To hear the sea-maid's music.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>I remember.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,<br/>Flying between the cold moon and the earth,<br/>Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took<br/>At a fair vestal throned by the west,<br/>And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,<br/>As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;<br/>But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft<br/>Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,<br/>And the imperial votaress passed on,<br/>In maiden meditation, fancy-free.<br/>Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:<br/>It fell upon a little western flower,<br/>Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,<br/>And maidens call it love-in-idleness.<br/>Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew'd thee once:<br/>The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid<br/>Will make or man or woman madly dote<br/>Upon the next live creature that it sees.<br/>Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again<br/>Ere the leviathan can swim a league.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>I'll put a girdle round about the earth<br/>In forty minutes.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Having once this juice,<br/>I'll watch Titania when she is asleep,<br/>And drop the liquor of it in her eyes.<br/>The next thing then she waking looks upon,<br/>Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,<br/>On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,<br/>She shall pursue it with the soul of love:<br/>And ere I take this charm from off her sight,<br/>As I can take it with another herb,<br/>I'll make her render up her page to me.<br/>But who comes here? I am invisible;<br/>And I will overhear their conference.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.<br/>Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?<br/>The one I'll slay, the other slayeth me.<br/>Thou told'st me they were stolen unto this wood;<br/>And here am I, and wode within this wood,<br/>Because I cannot meet my Hermia.<br/>Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;<br/>But yet you draw not iron, for my heart<br/>Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,<br/>And I shall have no power to follow you.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Do I entice you? do I speak you fair?<br/>Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth<br/>Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you?<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>And even for that do I love you the more.<br/>I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,<br/>The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:<br/>Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,<br/>Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,<br/>Unworthy as I am, to follow you.<br/>What worser place can I beg in your love,--<br/>And yet a place of high respect with me,--<br/>Than to be used as you use your dog?<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;<br/>For I am sick when I do look on thee.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>And I am sick when I look not on you.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>You do impeach your modesty too much,<br/>To leave the city and commit yourself<br/>Into the hands of one that loves you not;<br/>To trust the opportunity of night<br/>And the ill counsel of a desert place<br/>With the rich worth of your virginity.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Your virtue is my privilege: for that<br/>It is not night when I do see your face,<br/>Therefore I think I am not in the night;<br/>Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,<br/>For you in my respect are all the world:<br/>Then how can it be said I am alone,<br/>When all the world is here to look on me?<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>I'll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,<br/>And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>The wildest hath not such a heart as you.<br/>Run when you will, the story shall be changed:<br/>Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;<br/>The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind<br/>Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed,<br/>When cowardice pursues and valour flies.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>I will not stay thy questions; let me go:<br/>Or, if thou follow me, do not believe<br/>But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,<br/>You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!<br/>Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex:<br/>We cannot fight for love, as men may do;<br/>We should be wood and were not made to woo.<br/>I'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,<br/>To die upon the hand I love so well.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Fare thee well, nymph: ere he do leave this grove,<br/>Thou shalt fly him and he shall seek thy love.<br/>Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Ay, there it is.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>I pray thee, give it me.<br/>I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,<br/>Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,<br/>Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,<br/>With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:<br/>There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,<br/>Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;<br/>And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,<br/>Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:<br/>And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes,<br/>And make her full of hateful fantasies.<br/>Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:<br/>A sweet Athenian lady is in love<br/>With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;<br/>But do it when the next thing he espies<br/>May be the lady: thou shalt know the man<br/>By the Athenian garments he hath on.<br/>Effect it with some care, that he may prove<br/>More fond on her than she upon her love:<br/>And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so.<br/><h3>SCENE II.  Another part of the wood.</h3><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;<br/>Then, for the third part of a minute, hence;<br/>Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,<br/>Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,<br/>To make my small elves coats, and some keep back<br/>The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders<br/>At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;<br/>Then to your offices and let me rest.<br/>You spotted snakes with double tongue,<br/>Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;<br/>Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,<br/>Come not near our fairy queen.<br/>Philomel, with melody<br/>Sing in our sweet lullaby;<br/>Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:<br/>Never harm,<br/>Nor spell nor charm,<br/>Come our lovely lady nigh;<br/>So, good night, with lullaby.<br/>Weaving spiders, come not here;<br/>Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence!<br/>Beetles black, approach not near;<br/>Worm nor snail, do no offence.<br/>Philomel, with melody, &amp;c.<br/><b>Fairy</b><br/>Hence, away! now all is well:<br/>One aloof stand sentinel.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>What thou seest when thou dost wake,<br/>Do it for thy true-love take,<br/>Love and languish for his sake:<br/>Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,<br/>Pard, or boar with bristled hair,<br/>In thy eye that shall appear<br/>When thou wakest, it is thy dear:<br/>Wake when some vile thing is near.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Fair love, you faint with wandering in the wood;<br/>And to speak troth, I have forgot our way:<br/>We'll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,<br/>And tarry for the comfort of the day.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed;<br/>For I upon this bank will rest my head.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;<br/>One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,<br/>Lie further off yet, do not lie so near.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!<br/>Love takes the meaning in love's conference.<br/>I mean, that my heart unto yours is knit<br/>So that but one heart we can make of it;<br/>Two bosoms interchained with an oath;<br/>So then two bosoms and a single troth.<br/>Then by your side no bed-room me deny;<br/>For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Lysander riddles very prettily:<br/>Now much beshrew my manners and my pride,<br/>If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied.<br/>But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy<br/>Lie further off; in human modesty,<br/>Such separation as may well be said<br/>Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid,<br/>So far be distant; and, good night, sweet friend:<br/>Thy love ne'er alter till thy sweet life end!<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Amen, amen, to that fair prayer, say I;<br/>And then end life when I end loyalty!<br/>Here is my bed: sleep give thee all his rest!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>With half that wish the wisher's eyes be press'd!<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Through the forest have I gone.<br/>But Athenian found I none,<br/>On whose eyes I might approve<br/>This flower's force in stirring love.<br/>Night and silence.--Who is here?<br/>Weeds of Athens he doth wear:<br/>This is he, my master said,<br/>Despised the Athenian maid;<br/>And here the maiden, sleeping sound,<br/>On the dank and dirty ground.<br/>Pretty soul! she durst not lie<br/>Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.<br/>Churl, upon thy eyes I throw<br/>All the power this charm doth owe.<br/>When thou wakest, let love forbid<br/>Sleep his seat on thy eyelid:<br/>So awake when I am gone;<br/>For I must now to Oberon.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O, wilt thou darkling leave me? do not so.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Stay, on thy peril: I alone will go.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!<br/>The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.<br/>Happy is Hermia, wheresoe'er she lies;<br/>For she hath blessed and attractive eyes.<br/>How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears:<br/>If so, my eyes are oftener wash'd than hers.<br/>No, no, I am as ugly as a bear;<br/>For beasts that meet me run away for fear:<br/>Therefore no marvel though Demetrius<br/>Do, as a monster fly my presence thus.<br/>What wicked and dissembling glass of mine<br/>Made me compare with Hermia's sphery eyne?<br/>But who is here? Lysander! on the ground!<br/>Dead? or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.<br/>Lysander if you live, good sir, awake.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake.<br/>Transparent Helena! Nature shows art,<br/>That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.<br/>Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word<br/>Is that vile name to perish on my sword!<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Do not say so, Lysander; say not so<br/>What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what though?<br/>Yet Hermia still loves you: then be content.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Content with Hermia! No; I do repent<br/>The tedious minutes I with her have spent.<br/>Not Hermia but Helena I love:<br/>Who will not change a raven for a dove?<br/>The will of man is by his reason sway'd;<br/>And reason says you are the worthier maid.<br/>Things growing are not ripe until their season<br/>So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;<br/>And touching now the point of human skill,<br/>Reason becomes the marshal to my will<br/>And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook<br/>Love's stories written in love's richest book.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?<br/>When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?<br/>Is't not enough, is't not enough, young man,<br/>That I did never, no, nor never can,<br/>Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius' eye,<br/>But you must flout my insufficiency?<br/>Good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth, you do,<br/>In such disdainful manner me to woo.<br/>But fare you well: perforce I must confess<br/>I thought you lord of more true gentleness.<br/>O, that a lady, of one man refused.<br/>Should of another therefore be abused!<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there:<br/>And never mayst thou come Lysander near!<br/>For as a surfeit of the sweetest things<br/>The deepest loathing to the stomach brings,<br/>Or as tie heresies that men do leave<br/>Are hated most of those they did deceive,<br/>So thou, my surfeit and my heresy,<br/>Of all be hated, but the most of me!<br/>And, all my powers, address your love and might<br/>To honour Helen and to be her knight!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best<br/>To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!<br/>Ay me, for pity! what a dream was here!<br/>Lysander, look how I do quake with fear:<br/>Methought a serpent eat my heart away,<br/>And you sat smiling at his cruel pray.<br/>Lysander! what, removed? Lysander! lord!<br/>What, out of hearing? gone? no sound, no word?<br/>Alack, where are you speak, an if you hear;<br/>Speak, of all loves! I swoon almost with fear.<br/>No? then I well perceive you all not nigh<br/>Either death or you I'll find immediately.<br/><h2>ACT III</h2><h3>SCENE I.  The wood. TITANIA lying asleep.</h3><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Are we all met?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Pat, pat; and here's a marvellous convenient place<br/>for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our<br/>stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring-house; and we<br/>will do it in action as we will do it before the duke.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Peter Quince,--<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>What sayest thou, bully Bottom?<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and<br/>Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must<br/>draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies<br/>cannot abide. How answer you that?<br/><b>SNOUT</b><br/>By'r lakin, a parlous fear.<br/><b>STARVELING</b><br/>I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Not a whit: I have a device to make all well.<br/>Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to<br/>say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that<br/>Pyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the more<br/>better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not<br/>Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them<br/>out of fear.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be<br/>written in eight and six.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.<br/><b>SNOUT</b><br/>Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?<br/><b>STARVELING</b><br/>I fear it, I promise you.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to<br/>bring in--God shield us!--a lion among ladies, is a<br/>most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful<br/>wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to<br/>look to 't.<br/><b>SNOUT</b><br/>Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must<br/>be seen through the lion's neck: and he himself<br/>must speak through, saying thus, or to the same<br/>defect,--'Ladies,'--or 'Fair-ladies--I would wish<br/>You,'--or 'I would request you,'--or 'I would<br/>entreat you,--not to fear, not to tremble: my life<br/>for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it<br/>were pity of my life: no I am no such thing; I am a<br/>man as other men are;' and there indeed let him name<br/>his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Well it shall be so. But there is two hard things;<br/>that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for,<br/>you know, Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight.<br/><b>SNOUT</b><br/>Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find<br/>out moonshine, find out moonshine.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Yes, it doth shine that night.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Why, then may you leave a casement of the great<br/>chamber window, where we play, open, and the moon<br/>may shine in at the casement.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns<br/>and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to<br/>present, the person of Moonshine. Then, there is<br/>another thing: we must have a wall in the great<br/>chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby says the story, did<br/>talk through the chink of a wall.<br/><b>SNOUT</b><br/>You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Some man or other must present Wall: and let him<br/>have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast<br/>about him, to signify wall; and let him hold his<br/>fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus<br/>and Thisby whisper.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down,<br/>every mother's son, and rehearse your parts.<br/>Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your<br/>speech, enter into that brake: and so every one<br/>according to his cue.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,<br/>So near the cradle of the fairy queen?<br/>What, a play toward! I'll be an auditor;<br/>An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Speak, Pyramus. Thisby, stand forth.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet,--<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Odours, odours.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>--odours savours sweet:<br/>So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear.<br/>But hark, a voice! stay thou but here awhile,<br/>And by and by I will to thee appear.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>A stranger Pyramus than e'er played here.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>Must I speak now?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he goes<br/>but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,<br/>Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier,<br/>Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew,<br/>As true as truest horse that yet would never tire,<br/>I'll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny's tomb.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>'Ninus' tomb,' man: why, you must not speak that<br/>yet; that you answer to Pyramus: you speak all your<br/>part at once, cues and all Pyramus enter: your cue<br/>is past; it is, 'never tire.'<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>O,--As true as truest horse, that yet would<br/>never tire.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>If I were fair, Thisby, I were only thine.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>O monstrous! O strange! we are haunted. Pray,<br/>masters! fly, masters! Help!<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,<br/>Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:<br/>Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,<br/>A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;<br/>And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,<br/>Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Why do they run away? this is a knavery of them to<br/>make me afeard.<br/><b>SNOUT</b><br/>O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>What do you see? you see an asshead of your own, do<br/>you?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art<br/>translated.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me;<br/>to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir<br/>from this place, do what they can: I will walk up<br/>and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear<br/>I am not afraid.<br/>The ousel cock so black of hue,<br/>With orange-tawny bill,<br/>The throstle with his note so true,<br/>The wren with little quill,--<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>The finch, the sparrow and the lark,<br/>The plain-song cuckoo gray,<br/>Whose note full many a man doth mark,<br/>And dares not answer nay;--<br/>for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish<br/>a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry<br/>'cuckoo' never so?<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:<br/>Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;<br/>So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;<br/>And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me<br/>On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason<br/>for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and<br/>love keep little company together now-a-days; the<br/>more the pity that some honest neighbours will not<br/>make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out<br/>of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Out of this wood do not desire to go:<br/>Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.<br/>I am a spirit of no common rate;<br/>The summer still doth tend upon my state;<br/>And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;<br/>I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,<br/>And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,<br/>And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;<br/>And I will purge thy mortal grossness so<br/>That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.<br/>Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!<br/><b>PEASEBLOSSOM</b><br/>Ready.<br/><b>COBWEB</b><br/>And I.<br/><b>MOTH</b><br/>And I.<br/><b>MUSTARDSEED</b><br/>And I.<br/><b>ALL</b><br/>Where shall we go?<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;<br/>Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;<br/>Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,<br/>With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;<br/>The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,<br/>And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs<br/>And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,<br/>To have my love to bed and to arise;<br/>And pluck the wings from Painted butterflies<br/>To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:<br/>Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.<br/><b>PEASEBLOSSOM</b><br/>Hail, mortal!<br/><b>COBWEB</b><br/>Hail!<br/><b>MOTH</b><br/>Hail!<br/><b>MUSTARDSEED</b><br/>Hail!<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I cry your worship's mercy, heartily: I beseech your<br/>worship's name.<br/><b>COBWEB</b><br/>Cobweb.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master<br/>Cobweb: if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with<br/>you. Your name, honest gentleman?<br/><b>PEASEBLOSSOM</b><br/>Peaseblossom.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your<br/>mother, and to Master Peascod, your father. Good<br/>Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire you of more<br/>acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you, sir?<br/><b>MUSTARDSEED</b><br/>Mustardseed.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience well:<br/>that same cowardly, giant-like ox-beef hath<br/>devoured many a gentleman of your house: I promise<br/>you your kindred had made my eyes water ere now. I<br/>desire your more acquaintance, good Master<br/>Mustardseed.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower.<br/>The moon methinks looks with a watery eye;<br/>And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,<br/>Lamenting some enforced chastity.<br/>Tie up my love's tongue bring him silently.<br/><h3>SCENE II.  Another part of the wood.</h3><b>OBERON</b><br/>I wonder if Titania be awaked;<br/>Then, what it was that next came in her eye,<br/>Which she must dote on in extremity.<br/>Here comes my messenger.<br/>How now, mad spirit!<br/>What night-rule now about this haunted grove?<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>My mistress with a monster is in love.<br/>Near to her close and consecrated bower,<br/>While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,<br/>A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,<br/>That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,<br/>Were met together to rehearse a play<br/>Intended for great Theseus' nuptial-day.<br/>The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,<br/>Who Pyramus presented, in their sport<br/>Forsook his scene and enter'd in a brake<br/>When I did him at this advantage take,<br/>An ass's nole I fixed on his head:<br/>Anon his Thisbe must be answered,<br/>And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,<br/>As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,<br/>Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,<br/>Rising and cawing at the gun's report,<br/>Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,<br/>So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;<br/>And, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls;<br/>He murder cries and help from Athens calls.<br/>Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears<br/>thus strong,<br/>Made senseless things begin to do them wrong;<br/>For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;<br/>Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all<br/>things catch.<br/>I led them on in this distracted fear,<br/>And left sweet Pyramus translated there:<br/>When in that moment, so it came to pass,<br/>Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>This falls out better than I could devise.<br/>But hast thou yet latch'd the Athenian's eyes<br/>With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do?<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>I took him sleeping,--that is finish'd too,--<br/>And the Athenian woman by his side:<br/>That, when he waked, of force she must be eyed.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Stand close: this is the same Athenian.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>This is the woman, but not this the man.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>O, why rebuke you him that loves you so?<br/>Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Now I but chide; but I should use thee worse,<br/>For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse,<br/>If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,<br/>Being o'er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep,<br/>And kill me too.<br/>The sun was not so true unto the day<br/>As he to me: would he have stolen away<br/>From sleeping Hermia? I'll believe as soon<br/>This whole earth may be bored and that the moon<br/>May through the centre creep and so displease<br/>Her brother's noontide with Antipodes.<br/>It cannot be but thou hast murder'd him;<br/>So should a murderer look, so dead, so grim.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>So should the murder'd look, and so should I,<br/>Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty:<br/>Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear,<br/>As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>What's this to my Lysander? where is he?<br/>Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>I had rather give his carcass to my hounds.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Out, dog! out, cur! thou drivest me past the bounds<br/>Of maiden's patience. Hast thou slain him, then?<br/>Henceforth be never number'd among men!<br/>O, once tell true, tell true, even for my sake!<br/>Durst thou have look'd upon him being awake,<br/>And hast thou kill'd him sleeping? O brave touch!<br/>Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?<br/>An adder did it; for with doubler tongue<br/>Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>You spend your passion on a misprised mood:<br/>I am not guilty of Lysander's blood;<br/>Nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>I pray thee, tell me then that he is well.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>An if I could, what should I get therefore?<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>A privilege never to see me more.<br/>And from thy hated presence part I so:<br/>See me no more, whether he be dead or no.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>There is no following her in this fierce vein:<br/>Here therefore for a while I will remain.<br/>So sorrow's heaviness doth heavier grow<br/>For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe:<br/>Which now in some slight measure it will pay,<br/>If for his tender here I make some stay.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>What hast thou done? thou hast mistaken quite<br/>And laid the love-juice on some true-love's sight:<br/>Of thy misprision must perforce ensue<br/>Some true love turn'd and not a false turn'd true.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Then fate o'er-rules, that, one man holding troth,<br/>A million fail, confounding oath on oath.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>About the wood go swifter than the wind,<br/>And Helena of Athens look thou find:<br/>All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer,<br/>With sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear:<br/>By some illusion see thou bring her here:<br/>I'll charm his eyes against she do appear.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>I go, I go; look how I go,<br/>Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Flower of this purple dye,<br/>Hit with Cupid's archery,<br/>Sink in apple of his eye.<br/>When his love he doth espy,<br/>Let her shine as gloriously<br/>As the Venus of the sky.<br/>When thou wakest, if she be by,<br/>Beg of her for remedy.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Captain of our fairy band,<br/>Helena is here at hand;<br/>And the youth, mistook by me,<br/>Pleading for a lover's fee.<br/>Shall we their fond pageant see?<br/>Lord, what fools these mortals be!<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Stand aside: the noise they make<br/>Will cause Demetrius to awake.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Then will two at once woo one;<br/>That must needs be sport alone;<br/>And those things do best please me<br/>That befal preposterously.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?<br/>Scorn and derision never come in tears:<br/>Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born,<br/>In their nativity all truth appears.<br/>How can these things in me seem scorn to you,<br/>Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>You do advance your cunning more and more.<br/>When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!<br/>These vows are Hermia's: will you give her o'er?<br/>Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh:<br/>Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,<br/>Will even weigh, and both as light as tales.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>I had no judgment when to her I swore.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Nor none, in my mind, now you give her o'er.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!<br/>To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?<br/>Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show<br/>Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!<br/>That pure congealed white, high Taurus snow,<br/>Fann'd with the eastern wind, turns to a crow<br/>When thou hold'st up thy hand: O, let me kiss<br/>This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent<br/>To set against me for your merriment:<br/>If you we re civil and knew courtesy,<br/>You would not do me thus much injury.<br/>Can you not hate me, as I know you do,<br/>But you must join in souls to mock me too?<br/>If you were men, as men you are in show,<br/>You would not use a gentle lady so;<br/>To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts,<br/>When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.<br/>You both are rivals, and love Hermia;<br/>And now both rivals, to mock Helena:<br/>A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,<br/>To conjure tears up in a poor maid's eyes<br/>With your derision! none of noble sort<br/>Would so offend a virgin, and extort<br/>A poor soul's patience, all to make you sport.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>You are unkind, Demetrius; be not so;<br/>For you love Hermia; this you know I know:<br/>And here, with all good will, with all my heart,<br/>In Hermia's love I yield you up my part;<br/>And yours of Helena to me bequeath,<br/>Whom I do love and will do till my death.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Never did mockers waste more idle breath.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none:<br/>If e'er I loved her, all that love is gone.<br/>My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn'd,<br/>And now to Helen is it home return'd,<br/>There to remain.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Helen, it is not so.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Disparage not the faith thou dost not know,<br/>Lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear.<br/>Look, where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,<br/>The ear more quick of apprehension makes;<br/>Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,<br/>It pays the hearing double recompense.<br/>Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found;<br/>Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound<br/>But why unkindly didst thou leave me so?<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Why should he stay, whom love doth press to go?<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>What love could press Lysander from my side?<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Lysander's love, that would not let him bide,<br/>Fair Helena, who more engilds the night<br/>Than all you fiery oes and eyes of light.<br/>Why seek'st thou me? could not this make thee know,<br/>The hate I bear thee made me leave thee so?<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>You speak not as you think: it cannot be.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Lo, she is one of this confederacy!<br/>Now I perceive they have conjoin'd all three<br/>To fashion this false sport, in spite of me.<br/>Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid!<br/>Have you conspired, have you with these contrived<br/>To bait me with this foul derision?<br/>Is all the counsel that we two have shared,<br/>The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,<br/>When we have chid the hasty-footed time<br/>For parting us,--O, is it all forgot?<br/>All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?<br/>We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,<br/>Have with our needles created both one flower,<br/>Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,<br/>Both warbling of one song, both in one key,<br/>As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,<br/>Had been incorporate. So we grow together,<br/>Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,<br/>But yet an union in partition;<br/>Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;<br/>So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;<br/>Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,<br/>Due but to one and crowned with one crest.<br/>And will you rent our ancient love asunder,<br/>To join with men in scorning your poor friend?<br/>It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly:<br/>Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,<br/>Though I alone do feel the injury.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>I am amazed at your passionate words.<br/>I scorn you not: it seems that you scorn me.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn,<br/>To follow me and praise my eyes and face?<br/>And made your other love, Demetrius,<br/>Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,<br/>To call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare,<br/>Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this<br/>To her he hates? and wherefore doth Lysander<br/>Deny your love, so rich within his soul,<br/>And tender me, forsooth, affection,<br/>But by your setting on, by your consent?<br/>What thought I be not so in grace as you,<br/>So hung upon with love, so fortunate,<br/>But miserable most, to love unloved?<br/>This you should pity rather than despise.<br/><b>HERNIA</b><br/>I understand not what you mean by this.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Ay, do, persever, counterfeit sad looks,<br/>Make mouths upon me when I turn my back;<br/>Wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up:<br/>This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled.<br/>If you have any pity, grace, or manners,<br/>You would not make me such an argument.<br/>But fare ye well: 'tis partly my own fault;<br/>Which death or absence soon shall remedy.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse:<br/>My love, my life my soul, fair Helena!<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O excellent!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Sweet, do not scorn her so.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>If she cannot entreat, I can compel.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Thou canst compel no more than she entreat:<br/>Thy threats have no more strength than her weak prayers.<br/>Helen, I love thee; by my life, I do:<br/>I swear by that which I will lose for thee,<br/>To prove him false that says I love thee not.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>I say I love thee more than he can do.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Quick, come!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Lysander, whereto tends all this?<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Away, you Ethiope!<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>No, no; he'll<br/>Seem to break loose; take on as you would follow,<br/>But yet come not: you are a tame man, go!<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! vile thing, let loose,<br/>Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Why are you grown so rude? what change is this?<br/>Sweet love,--<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Thy love! out, tawny Tartar, out!<br/>Out, loathed medicine! hated potion, hence!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Do you not jest?<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Yes, sooth; and so do you.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>I would I had your bond, for I perceive<br/>A weak bond holds you: I'll not trust your word.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead?<br/>Although I hate her, I'll not harm her so.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>What, can you do me greater harm than hate?<br/>Hate me! wherefore? O me! what news, my love!<br/>Am not I Hermia? are not you Lysander?<br/>I am as fair now as I was erewhile.<br/>Since night you loved me; yet since night you left<br/>me:<br/>Why, then you left me--O, the gods forbid!--<br/>In earnest, shall I say?<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Ay, by my life;<br/>And never did desire to see thee more.<br/>Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt;<br/>Be certain, nothing truer; 'tis no jest<br/>That I do hate thee and love Helena.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>O me! you juggler! you canker-blossom!<br/>You thief of love! what, have you come by night<br/>And stolen my love's heart from him?<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Fine, i'faith!<br/>Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,<br/>No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear<br/>Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?<br/>Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet, you!<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.<br/>Now I perceive that she hath made compare<br/>Between our statures; she hath urged her height;<br/>And with her personage, her tall personage,<br/>Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.<br/>And are you grown so high in his esteem;<br/>Because I am so dwarfish and so low?<br/>How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;<br/>How low am I? I am not yet so low<br/>But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,<br/>Let her not hurt me: I was never curst;<br/>I have no gift at all in shrewishness;<br/>I am a right maid for my cowardice:<br/>Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,<br/>Because she is something lower than myself,<br/>That I can match her.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Lower! hark, again.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.<br/>I evermore did love you, Hermia,<br/>Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong'd you;<br/>Save that, in love unto Demetrius,<br/>I told him of your stealth unto this wood.<br/>He follow'd you; for love I follow'd him;<br/>But he hath chid me hence and threaten'd me<br/>To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too:<br/>And now, so you will let me quiet go,<br/>To Athens will I bear my folly back<br/>And follow you no further: let me go:<br/>You see how simple and how fond I am.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Why, get you gone: who is't that hinders you?<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>A foolish heart, that I leave here behind.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>What, with Lysander?<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>With Demetrius.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Be not afraid; she shall not harm thee, Helena.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd!<br/>She was a vixen when she went to school;<br/>And though she be but little, she is fierce.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>'Little' again! nothing but 'low' and 'little'!<br/>Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?<br/>Let me come to her.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Get you gone, you dwarf;<br/>You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made;<br/>You bead, you acorn.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>You are too officious<br/>In her behalf that scorns your services.<br/>Let her alone: speak not of Helena;<br/>Take not her part; for, if thou dost intend<br/>Never so little show of love to her,<br/>Thou shalt aby it.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Now she holds me not;<br/>Now follow, if thou darest, to try whose right,<br/>Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Follow! nay, I'll go with thee, cheek by jole.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>You, mistress, all this coil is 'long of you:<br/>Nay, go not back.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>I will not trust you, I,<br/>Nor longer stay in your curst company.<br/>Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray,<br/>My legs are longer though, to run away.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>I am amazed, and know not what to say.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>This is thy negligence: still thou mistakest,<br/>Or else committ'st thy knaveries wilfully.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.<br/>Did not you tell me I should know the man<br/>By the Athenian garment be had on?<br/>And so far blameless proves my enterprise,<br/>That I have 'nointed an Athenian's eyes;<br/>And so far am I glad it so did sort<br/>As this their jangling I esteem a sport.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Thou see'st these lovers seek a place to fight:<br/>Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night;<br/>The starry welkin cover thou anon<br/>With drooping fog as black as Acheron,<br/>And lead these testy rivals so astray<br/>As one come not within another's way.<br/>Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue,<br/>Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;<br/>And sometime rail thou like Demetrius;<br/>And from each other look thou lead them thus,<br/>Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep<br/>With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep:<br/>Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye;<br/>Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,<br/>To take from thence all error with his might,<br/>And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.<br/>When they next wake, all this derision<br/>Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision,<br/>And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,<br/>With league whose date till death shall never end.<br/>Whiles I in this affair do thee employ,<br/>I'll to my queen and beg her Indian boy;<br/>And then I will her charmed eye release<br/>From monster's view, and all things shall be peace.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,<br/>For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,<br/>And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;<br/>At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,<br/>Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,<br/>That in crossways and floods have burial,<br/>Already to their wormy beds are gone;<br/>For fear lest day should look their shames upon,<br/>They willfully themselves exile from light<br/>And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>But we are spirits of another sort:<br/>I with the morning's love have oft made sport,<br/>And, like a forester, the groves may tread,<br/>Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,<br/>Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,<br/>Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.<br/>But, notwithstanding, haste; make no delay:<br/>We may effect this business yet ere day.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Up and down, up and down,<br/>I will lead them up and down:<br/>I am fear'd in field and town:<br/>Goblin, lead them up and down.<br/>Here comes one.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Where art thou, proud Demetrius? speak thou now.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Here, villain; drawn and ready. Where art thou?<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>I will be with thee straight.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Follow me, then,<br/>To plainer ground.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Lysander! speak again:<br/>Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?<br/>Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars,<br/>Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars,<br/>And wilt not come? Come, recreant; come, thou child;<br/>I'll whip thee with a rod: he is defiled<br/>That draws a sword on thee.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Yea, art thou there?<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Follow my voice: we'll try no manhood here.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>He goes before me and still dares me on:<br/>When I come where he calls, then he is gone.<br/>The villain is much lighter-heel'd than I:<br/>I follow'd fast, but faster he did fly;<br/>That fallen am I in dark uneven way,<br/>And here will rest me.<br/>Come, thou gentle day!<br/>For if but once thou show me thy grey light,<br/>I'll find Demetrius and revenge this spite.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why comest thou not?<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Abide me, if thou darest; for well I wot<br/>Thou runn'st before me, shifting every place,<br/>And darest not stand, nor look me in the face.<br/>Where art thou now?<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Come hither: I am here.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Nay, then, thou mock'st me. Thou shalt buy this dear,<br/>If ever I thy face by daylight see:<br/>Now, go thy way. Faintness constraineth me<br/>To measure out my length on this cold bed.<br/>By day's approach look to be visited.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>O weary night, O long and tedious night,<br/>Abate thy hour! Shine comforts from the east,<br/>That I may back to Athens by daylight,<br/>From these that my poor company detest:<br/>And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye,<br/>Steal me awhile from mine own company.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Yet but three? Come one more;<br/>Two of both kinds make up four.<br/>Here she comes, curst and sad:<br/>Cupid is a knavish lad,<br/>Thus to make poor females mad.<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Never so weary, never so in woe,<br/>Bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers,<br/>I can no further crawl, no further go;<br/>My legs can keep no pace with my desires.<br/>Here will I rest me till the break of day.<br/>Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray!<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>On the ground<br/>Sleep sound:<br/>I'll apply<br/>To your eye,<br/>Gentle lover, remedy.<br/>When thou wakest,<br/>Thou takest<br/>True delight<br/>In the sight<br/>Of thy former lady's eye:<br/>And the country proverb known,<br/>That every man should take his own,<br/>In your waking shall be shown:<br/>Jack shall have Jill;<br/>Nought shall go ill;<br/>The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.<br/><h2>ACT IV</h2><h3>SCENE I.  The same. LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HELENA, and HERMIA lying asleep.</h3><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,<br/>While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,<br/>And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,<br/>And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Where's Peaseblossom?<br/><b>PEASEBLOSSOM</b><br/>Ready.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Scratch my head Peaseblossom. Where's Mounsieur Cobweb?<br/><b>COBWEB</b><br/>Ready.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your<br/>weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped<br/>humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good<br/>mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret<br/>yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and,<br/>good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not;<br/>I would be loath to have you overflown with a<br/>honey-bag, signior. Where's Mounsieur Mustardseed?<br/><b>MUSTARDSEED</b><br/>Ready.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. Pray you,<br/>leave your courtesy, good mounsieur.<br/><b>MUSTARDSEED</b><br/>What's your Will?<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb<br/>to scratch. I must to the barber's, monsieur; for<br/>methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I<br/>am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me,<br/>I must scratch.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>What, wilt thou hear some music,<br/>my sweet love?<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let's have<br/>the tongs and the bones.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Truly, a peck of provender: I could munch your good<br/>dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle<br/>of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>I have a venturous fairy that shall seek<br/>The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas.<br/>But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I<br/>have an exposition of sleep come upon me.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.<br/>Fairies, begone, and be all ways away.<br/>So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle<br/>Gently entwist; the female ivy so<br/>Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.<br/>O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Welcome, good Robin.<br/>See'st thou this sweet sight?<br/>Her dotage now I do begin to pity:<br/>For, meeting her of late behind the wood,<br/>Seeking sweet favours from this hateful fool,<br/>I did upbraid her and fall out with her;<br/>For she his hairy temples then had rounded<br/>With a coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;<br/>And that same dew, which sometime on the buds<br/>Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,<br/>Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes<br/>Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.<br/>When I had at my pleasure taunted her<br/>And she in mild terms begg'd my patience,<br/>I then did ask of her her changeling child;<br/>Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent<br/>To bear him to my bower in fairy land.<br/>And now I have the boy, I will undo<br/>This hateful imperfection of her eyes:<br/>And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp<br/>From off the head of this Athenian swain;<br/>That, he awaking when the other do,<br/>May all to Athens back again repair<br/>And think no more of this night's accidents<br/>But as the fierce vexation of a dream.<br/>But first I will release the fairy queen.<br/>Be as thou wast wont to be;<br/>See as thou wast wont to see:<br/>Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower<br/>Hath such force and blessed power.<br/>Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>My Oberon! what visions have I seen!<br/>Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>There lies your love.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>How came these things to pass?<br/>O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.<br/>Titania, music call; and strike more dead<br/>Than common sleep of all these five the sense.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep!<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Now, when thou wakest, with thine<br/>own fool's eyes peep.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Sound, music! Come, my queen, take hands with me,<br/>And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.<br/>Now thou and I are new in amity,<br/>And will to-morrow midnight solemnly<br/>Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly,<br/>And bless it to all fair prosperity:<br/>There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be<br/>Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Fairy king, attend, and mark:<br/>I do hear the morning lark.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Then, my queen, in silence sad,<br/>Trip we after the night's shade:<br/>We the globe can compass soon,<br/>Swifter than the wandering moon.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>Come, my lord, and in our flight<br/>Tell me how it came this night<br/>That I sleeping here was found<br/>With these mortals on the ground.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Go, one of you, find out the forester;<br/>For now our observation is perform'd;<br/>And since we have the vaward of the day,<br/>My love shall hear the music of my hounds.<br/>Uncouple in the western valley; let them go:<br/>Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.<br/>We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,<br/>And mark the musical confusion<br/>Of hounds and echo in conjunction.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,<br/>When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear<br/>With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear<br/>Such gallant chiding: for, besides the groves,<br/>The skies, the fountains, every region near<br/>Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard<br/>So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,<br/>So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung<br/>With ears that sweep away the morning dew;<br/>Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;<br/>Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,<br/>Each under each. A cry more tuneable<br/>Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,<br/>In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:<br/>Judge when you hear. But, soft! what nymphs are these?<br/><b>EGEUS</b><br/>My lord, this is my daughter here asleep;<br/>And this, Lysander; this Demetrius is;<br/>This Helena, old Nedar's Helena:<br/>I wonder of their being here together.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>No doubt they rose up early to observe<br/>The rite of May, and hearing our intent,<br/>Came here in grace our solemnity.<br/>But speak, Egeus; is not this the day<br/>That Hermia should give answer of her choice?<br/><b>EGEUS</b><br/>It is, my lord.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.<br/>Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past:<br/>Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Pardon, my lord.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>I pray you all, stand up.<br/>I know you two are rival enemies:<br/>How comes this gentle concord in the world,<br/>That hatred is so far from jealousy,<br/>To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>My lord, I shall reply amazedly,<br/>Half sleep, half waking: but as yet, I swear,<br/>I cannot truly say how I came here;<br/>But, as I think,--for truly would I speak,<br/>And now do I bethink me, so it is,--<br/>I came with Hermia hither: our intent<br/>Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,<br/>Without the peril of the Athenian law.<br/><b>EGEUS</b><br/>Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough:<br/>I beg the law, the law, upon his head.<br/>They would have stolen away; they would, Demetrius,<br/>Thereby to have defeated you and me,<br/>You of your wife and me of my consent,<br/>Of my consent that she should be your wife.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,<br/>Of this their purpose hither to this wood;<br/>And I in fury hither follow'd them,<br/>Fair Helena in fancy following me.<br/>But, my good lord, I wot not by what power,--<br/>But by some power it is,--my love to Hermia,<br/>Melted as the snow, seems to me now<br/>As the remembrance of an idle gaud<br/>Which in my childhood I did dote upon;<br/>And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,<br/>The object and the pleasure of mine eye,<br/>Is only Helena. To her, my lord,<br/>Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia:<br/>But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food;<br/>But, as in health, come to my natural taste,<br/>Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,<br/>And will for evermore be true to it.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:<br/>Of this discourse we more will hear anon.<br/>Egeus, I will overbear your will;<br/>For in the temple by and by with us<br/>These couples shall eternally be knit:<br/>And, for the morning now is something worn,<br/>Our purposed hunting shall be set aside.<br/>Away with us to Athens; three and three,<br/>We'll hold a feast in great solemnity.<br/>Come, Hippolyta.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>These things seem small and undistinguishable,<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Methinks I see these things with parted eye,<br/>When every thing seems double.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>So methinks:<br/>And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,<br/>Mine own, and not mine own.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Are you sure<br/>That we are awake? It seems to me<br/>That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think<br/>The duke was here, and bid us follow him?<br/><b>HERMIA</b><br/>Yea; and my father.<br/><b>HELENA</b><br/>And Hippolyta.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>And he did bid us follow to the temple.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Why, then, we are awake: let's follow him<br/>And by the way let us recount our dreams.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>When my cue comes, call me, and I will<br/>answer: my next is, 'Most fair Pyramus.' Heigh-ho!<br/>Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout,<br/>the tinker! Starveling! God's my life, stolen<br/>hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare<br/>vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to<br/>say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go<br/>about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there<br/>is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and<br/>methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if<br/>he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye<br/>of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not<br/>seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue<br/>to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream<br/>was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of<br/>this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream,<br/>because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the<br/>latter end of a play, before the duke:<br/>peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall<br/>sing it at her death.<br/><h3>SCENE II.  Athens. QUINCE'S house.</h3><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Have you sent to Bottom's house? is he come home yet?<br/><b>STARVELING</b><br/>He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is<br/>transported.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>If he come not, then the play is marred: it goes<br/>not forward, doth it?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>It is not possible: you have not a man in all<br/>Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft<br/>man in Athens.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Yea and the best person too; and he is a very<br/>paramour for a sweet voice.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>You must say 'paragon:' a paramour is, God bless us,<br/>a thing of naught.<br/><b>SNUG</b><br/>Masters, the duke is coming from the temple, and<br/>there is two or three lords and ladies more married:<br/>if our sport had gone forward, we had all been made<br/>men.<br/><b>FLUTE</b><br/>O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a<br/>day during his life; he could not have 'scaped<br/>sixpence a day: an the duke had not given him<br/>sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I'll be hanged;<br/>he would have deserved it: sixpence a day in<br/>Pyramus, or nothing.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Where are these lads? where are these hearts?<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy hour!<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not<br/>what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian. I<br/>will tell you every thing, right as it fell out.<br/><b>QUINCE</b><br/>Let us hear, sweet Bottom.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that<br/>the duke hath dined. Get your apparel together,<br/>good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your<br/>pumps; meet presently at the palace; every man look<br/>o'er his part; for the short and the long is, our<br/>play is preferred. In any case, let Thisby have<br/>clean linen; and let not him that plays the lion<br/>pair his nails, for they shall hang out for the<br/>lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onions<br/>nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I<br/>do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet<br/>comedy. No more words: away! go, away!<br/><h2>ACT V</h2><h3>SCENE I.  Athens. The palace of THESEUS.</h3><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>'Tis strange my Theseus, that these<br/>lovers speak of.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>More strange than true: I never may believe<br/>These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.<br/>Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,<br/>Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend<br/>More than cool reason ever comprehends.<br/>The lunatic, the lover and the poet<br/>Are of imagination all compact:<br/>One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,<br/>That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,<br/>Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:<br/>The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,<br/>Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;<br/>And as imagination bodies forth<br/>The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen<br/>Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing<br/>A local habitation and a name.<br/>Such tricks hath strong imagination,<br/>That if it would but apprehend some joy,<br/>It comprehends some bringer of that joy;<br/>Or in the night, imagining some fear,<br/>How easy is a bush supposed a bear!<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>But all the story of the night told over,<br/>And all their minds transfigured so together,<br/>More witnesseth than fancy's images<br/>And grows to something of great constancy;<br/>But, howsoever, strange and admirable.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.<br/>Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love<br/>Accompany your hearts!<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>More than to us<br/>Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,<br/>To wear away this long age of three hours<br/>Between our after-supper and bed-time?<br/>Where is our usual manager of mirth?<br/>What revels are in hand? Is there no play,<br/>To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?<br/>Call Philostrate.<br/><b>PHILOSTRATE</b><br/>Here, mighty Theseus.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?<br/>What masque? what music? How shall we beguile<br/>The lazy time, if not with some delight?<br/><b>PHILOSTRATE</b><br/>There is a brief how many sports are ripe:<br/>Make choice of which your highness will see first.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>'The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung<br/>By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.'<br/>We'll none of that: that have I told my love,<br/>In glory of my kinsman Hercules.<br/>'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,<br/>Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.'<br/>That is an old device; and it was play'd<br/>When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.<br/>'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death<br/>Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.'<br/>That is some satire, keen and critical,<br/>Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.<br/>'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus<br/>And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'<br/>Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!<br/>That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.<br/>How shall we find the concord of this discord?<br/><b>PHILOSTRATE</b><br/>A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,<br/>Which is as brief as I have known a play;<br/>But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,<br/>Which makes it tedious; for in all the play<br/>There is not one word apt, one player fitted:<br/>And tragical, my noble lord, it is;<br/>For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.<br/>Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,<br/>Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears<br/>The passion of loud laughter never shed.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>What are they that do play it?<br/><b>PHILOSTRATE</b><br/>Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,<br/>Which never labour'd in their minds till now,<br/>And now have toil'd their unbreathed memories<br/>With this same play, against your nuptial.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>And we will hear it.<br/><b>PHILOSTRATE</b><br/>No, my noble lord;<br/>It is not for you: I have heard it over,<br/>And it is nothing, nothing in the world;<br/>Unless you can find sport in their intents,<br/>Extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain,<br/>To do you service.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>I will hear that play;<br/>For never anything can be amiss,<br/>When simpleness and duty tender it.<br/>Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>I love not to see wretchedness o'er charged<br/>And duty in his service perishing.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>He says they can do nothing in this kind.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.<br/>Our sport shall be to take what they mistake:<br/>And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect<br/>Takes it in might, not merit.<br/>Where I have come, great clerks have purposed<br/>To greet me with premeditated welcomes;<br/>Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,<br/>Make periods in the midst of sentences,<br/>Throttle their practised accent in their fears<br/>And in conclusion dumbly have broke off,<br/>Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,<br/>Out of this silence yet I pick'd a welcome;<br/>And in the modesty of fearful duty<br/>I read as much as from the rattling tongue<br/>Of saucy and audacious eloquence.<br/>Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity<br/>In least speak most, to my capacity.<br/><b>PHILOSTRATE</b><br/>So please your grace, the Prologue is address'd.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Let him approach.<br/><b>Prologue</b><br/>If we offend, it is with our good will.<br/>That you should think, we come not to offend,<br/>But with good will. To show our simple skill,<br/>That is the true beginning of our end.<br/>Consider then we come but in despite.<br/>We do not come as minding to contest you,<br/>Our true intent is. All for your delight<br/>We are not here. That you should here repent you,<br/>The actors are at hand and by their show<br/>You shall know all that you are like to know.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>This fellow doth not stand upon points.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows<br/>not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not<br/>enough to speak, but to speak true.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child<br/>on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>His speech, was like a tangled chain; nothing<br/>impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?<br/><b>Prologue</b><br/>Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;<br/>But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.<br/>This man is Pyramus, if you would know;<br/>This beauteous lady Thisby is certain.<br/>This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present<br/>Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;<br/>And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are content<br/>To whisper. At the which let no man wonder.<br/>This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn,<br/>Presenteth Moonshine; for, if you will know,<br/>By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn<br/>To meet at Ninus' tomb, there, there to woo.<br/>This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,<br/>The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,<br/>Did scare away, or rather did affright;<br/>And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall,<br/>Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.<br/>Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall,<br/>And finds his trusty Thisby's mantle slain:<br/>Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,<br/>He bravely broach'd is boiling bloody breast;<br/>And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,<br/>His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,<br/>Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain<br/>At large discourse, while here they do remain.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>I wonder if the lion be to speak.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.<br/><b>Wall</b><br/>In this same interlude it doth befall<br/>That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;<br/>And such a wall, as I would have you think,<br/>That had in it a crannied hole or chink,<br/>Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,<br/>Did whisper often very secretly.<br/>This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show<br/>That I am that same wall; the truth is so:<br/>And this the cranny is, right and sinister,<br/>Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard<br/>discourse, my lord.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Pyramus draws near the wall: silence!<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!<br/>O night, which ever art when day is not!<br/>O night, O night! alack, alack, alack,<br/>I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot!<br/>And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,<br/>That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!<br/>Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,<br/>Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!<br/>Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!<br/>But what see I? No Thisby do I see.<br/>O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!<br/>Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me!<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>No, in truth, sir, he should not. 'Deceiving me'<br/>is Thisby's cue: she is to enter now, and I am to<br/>spy her through the wall. You shall see, it will<br/>fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes.<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,<br/>For parting my fair Pyramus and me!<br/>My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones,<br/>Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>I see a voice: now will I to the chink,<br/>To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face. Thisby!<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>My love thou art, my love I think.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's grace;<br/>And, like Limander, am I trusty still.<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall!<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>Wilt thou at Ninny's tomb meet me straightway?<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>'Tide life, 'tide death, I come without delay.<br/><b>Wall</b><br/>Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;<br/>And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear<br/>without warning.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst<br/>are no worse, if imagination amend them.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>If we imagine no worse of them than they of<br/>themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here<br/>come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.<br/><b>Lion</b><br/>You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear<br/>The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,<br/>May now perchance both quake and tremble here,<br/>When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.<br/>Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am<br/>A lion-fell, nor else no lion's dam;<br/>For, if I should as lion come in strife<br/>Into this place, 'twere pity on my life.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>A very gentle beast, of a good conscience.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>The very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er I saw.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>This lion is a very fox for his valour.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>True; and a goose for his discretion.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his<br/>discretion; and the fox carries the goose.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour;<br/>for the goose carries not the fox. It is well:<br/>leave it to his discretion, and let us listen to the moon.<br/><b>Moonshine</b><br/>This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;--<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>He should have worn the horns on his head.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>He is no crescent, and his horns are<br/>invisible within the circumference.<br/><b>Moonshine</b><br/>This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;<br/>Myself the man i' the moon do seem to be.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>This is the greatest error of all the rest: the man<br/>should be put into the lanthorn. How is it else the<br/>man i' the moon?<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>He dares not come there for the candle; for, you<br/>see, it is already in snuff.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>I am aweary of this moon: would he would change!<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>It appears, by his small light of discretion, that<br/>he is in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all<br/>reason, we must stay the time.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Proceed, Moon.<br/><b>Moonshine</b><br/>All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the<br/>lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this<br/>thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Why, all these should be in the lanthorn; for all<br/>these are in the moon. But, silence! here comes Thisbe.<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>This is old Ninny's tomb. Where is my love?<br/><b>Lion</b><br/>Oh--<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Well roared, Lion.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Well run, Thisbe.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines with a<br/>good grace.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Well moused, Lion.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>And so the lion vanished.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>And then came Pyramus.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;<br/>I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;<br/>For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams,<br/>I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.<br/>But stay, O spite!<br/>But mark, poor knight,<br/>What dreadful dole is here!<br/>Eyes, do you see?<br/>How can it be?<br/>O dainty duck! O dear!<br/>Thy mantle good,<br/>What, stain'd with blood!<br/>Approach, ye Furies fell!<br/>O Fates, come, come,<br/>Cut thread and thrum;<br/>Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would<br/>go near to make a man look sad.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.<br/><b>Pyramus</b><br/>O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame?<br/>Since lion vile hath here deflower'd my dear:<br/>Which is--no, no--which was the fairest dame<br/>That lived, that loved, that liked, that look'd<br/>with cheer.<br/>Come, tears, confound;<br/>Out, sword, and wound<br/>The pap of Pyramus;<br/>Ay, that left pap,<br/>Where heart doth hop:<br/>Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.<br/>Now am I dead,<br/>Now am I fled;<br/>My soul is in the sky:<br/>Tongue, lose thy light;<br/>Moon take thy flight:<br/>Now die, die, die, die, die.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and<br/>prove an ass.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisbe comes<br/>back and finds her lover?<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>She will find him by starlight. Here she comes; and<br/>her passion ends the play.<br/><b>HIPPOLYTA</b><br/>Methinks she should not use a long one for such a<br/>Pyramus: I hope she will be brief.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which<br/>Thisbe, is the better; he for a man, God warrant us;<br/>she for a woman, God bless us.<br/><b>LYSANDER</b><br/>She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>And thus she means, videlicet:--<br/><b>Thisbe</b><br/>Asleep, my love?<br/>What, dead, my dove?<br/>O Pyramus, arise!<br/>Speak, speak. Quite dumb?<br/>Dead, dead? A tomb<br/>Must cover thy sweet eyes.<br/>These My lips,<br/>This cherry nose,<br/>These yellow cowslip cheeks,<br/>Are gone, are gone:<br/>Lovers, make moan:<br/>His eyes were green as leeks.<br/>O Sisters Three,<br/>Come, come to me,<br/>With hands as pale as milk;<br/>Lay them in gore,<br/>Since you have shore<br/>With shears his thread of silk.<br/>Tongue, not a word:<br/>Come, trusty sword;<br/>Come, blade, my breast imbrue:<br/>And, farewell, friends;<br/>Thus Thisby ends:<br/>Adieu, adieu, adieu.<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead.<br/><b>DEMETRIUS</b><br/>Ay, and Wall too.<br/><b>BOTTOM</b><br/>No assure you; the wall is down that<br/>parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the<br/>epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance between two<br/>of our company?<br/><b>THESEUS</b><br/>No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no<br/>excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all<br/>dead, there needs none to be blamed. Marry, if he<br/>that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged himself<br/>in Thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine<br/>tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably<br/>discharged. But come, your Bergomask: let your<br/>epilogue alone.<br/>The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:<br/>Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.<br/>I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn<br/>As much as we this night have overwatch'd.<br/>This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled<br/>The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.<br/>A fortnight hold we this solemnity,<br/>In nightly revels and new jollity.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>Now the hungry lion roars,<br/>And the wolf behowls the moon;<br/>Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,<br/>All with weary task fordone.<br/>Now the wasted brands do glow,<br/>Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,<br/>Puts the wretch that lies in woe<br/>In remembrance of a shroud.<br/>Now it is the time of night<br/>That the graves all gaping wide,<br/>Every one lets forth his sprite,<br/>In the church-way paths to glide:<br/>And we fairies, that do run<br/>By the triple Hecate's team,<br/>From the presence of the sun,<br/>Following darkness like a dream,<br/>Now are frolic: not a mouse<br/>Shall disturb this hallow'd house:<br/>I am sent with broom before,<br/>To sweep the dust behind the door.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Through the house give gathering light,<br/>By the dead and drowsy fire:<br/>Every elf and fairy sprite<br/>Hop as light as bird from brier;<br/>And this ditty, after me,<br/>Sing, and dance it trippingly.<br/><b>TITANIA</b><br/>First, rehearse your song by rote<br/>To each word a warbling note:<br/>Hand in hand, with fairy grace,<br/>Will we sing, and bless this place.<br/><b>OBERON</b><br/>Now, until the break of day,<br/>Through this house each fairy stray.<br/>To the best bride-bed will we,<br/>Which by us shall blessed be;<br/>And the issue there create<br/>Ever shall be fortunate.<br/>So shall all the couples three<br/>Ever true in loving be;<br/>And the blots of Nature's hand<br/>Shall not in their issue stand;<br/>Never mole, hare lip, nor scar,<br/>Nor mark prodigious, such as are<br/>Despised in nativity,<br/>Shall upon their children be.<br/>With this field-dew consecrate,<br/>Every fairy take his gait;<br/>And each several chamber bless,<br/>Through this palace, with sweet peace;<br/>And the owner of it blest<br/>Ever shall in safety rest.<br/>Trip away; make no stay;<br/>Meet me all by break of day.<br/><b>PUCK</b><br/>If we shadows have offended,<br/>Think but this, and all is mended,<br/>That you have but slumber'd here<br/>While these visions did appear.<br/>And this weak and idle theme,<br/>No more yielding but a dream,<br/>Gentles, do not reprehend:<br/>if you pardon, we will mend:<br/>And, as I am an honest Puck,<br/>If we have unearned luck<br/>Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,<br/>We will make amends ere long;<br/>Else the Puck a liar call;<br/>So, good night unto you all.<br/>Give me your hands, if we be friends,<br/>And Robin shall restore amends.<br/></body></html>